A Strange Bed Fellow

1896

A. B. Goodwyn tells of rather an amusing incident, but what might have proved a serious accident, which occurred near the Lincoln County line.

Aaron Woody, with his family, lives in a small dug-out near Barnard, and one night last week Sam White's cattle broke out and one of the steers weighing about sixteen hundred pounds wandered onto the roof of the dug-out and went directly over the bed occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Woody. He went, like McGinty, to the bottom, striking the bed, but fortunately he fell across the headboard and not directly on the sleeping occupants.

Mr. Woody finally got the steer off and looked after the injuries of his wife and child. The latter he at first thought had been killed, and a doctor was sent for, but it speedily recovered and no serious injury except a terrific scare resulted from the accident.

This is a great country, where cattle wander on top of the houses and fall in on people while they are asleep. — Minneapolis Messenger.


Oriental Secrets

The Orientals possess the secrets of certain poisons in which they dip their daggers; a scratch from one of these poisoned instruments causes death. It is compounded of certain herbs and berries unknown to Europeans. — Detroit Tribune.

Death's Most Active Agent — Worry

1914

Worry, Never Hard Work, Responsible for the Decimation of the Human Races

We hear daily of men and women who are "working themselves to death." But work is as surely the friend of man as worry is his deadliest foe. Unless carking care and sickening foreboding are blent with labor, work never kills. Yet worry slays its tens and hundreds of thousands every year.

The person who wishes to live long and beneficently should cultivate the desire to see others as comfortable as he wishes to be himself. He must not regret that others are better off in what makes living pleasant.

Here is a fact that some so-called philanthropists never learn: there lives not the human creature who is wholly uninteresting. Be on the alert to espy something in those whom you meet that will commend them to your regard. Listlessness and the capacity for being bored bring more old people to the grave than disease or actual sorrow. If you have no other "job" in life, make one by forcing yourself to be interested in the welfare of your associates. — Youth's Companion.


Midnight Inspirations

Many eminent men have done some of their most famous work in bed. Indeed, no small part of the world's literary treasures have been produced between the sheets by physically indolent although mentally active men of genius.

Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus" came to him as he was sitting by his fireside on the night after a violent storm. He went to bed, but could not sleep; the Hesperus would not be denied, and as he lay the verses flowed on without let or hindrance until the poem was completed. Wordsworth used to go to bed after his morning walk, and, while breakfasting there, dictate the lines he had composed while walking. One at least of Rossini's operas was composed in bed. — Manchester Evening News.